A Qatari-backed fund has made a $47-per-share offer to acquire Papa John’s and take the company private, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the bid.
Papa John’s, which runs 6,000 locations across roughly 50 countries, has seen its shares fall 16% over the past year, but stock prices jumped around 20% intraday after news of the reported takeover bid.
The proposal from Irth Capital Management, backed by Brookfield Asset Management, would value the pizza chain at roughly $1.5 billion. The offer is about 50% above where the stock traded before the bid was submitted.
One of the top pizza restaurant chains in the US, Papa John’s is famously linked to the first real-world Bitcoin purchase.
In 2010, a programmer spent 10,000 Bitcoin on two pizzas from the chain, marking the first known real-world purchase using Bitcoin. The transaction is now celebrated each year as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.”
Irth Capital’s takeover bid comes amid the chain’s cost-cutting and restructuring efforts targeting underperforming outlets.
Papa John’s is set to close 300 of its restaurants by the end of 2027, with two hundred closures planned this year. The company reported 2025 revenue of over $2 billion, flat from 2024, with profits shrinking, and also trimmed its corporate workforce by 7%.